There's a good reason most people are paid by the hour. Time is money. We've found that the less money we need, the more time we have for the important things in life. Simplicity and self-reliance shape our lives.

Monday, January 12, 2009

How to save $600 (and mommy and daddy's sanity)

A few weekends ago, we installed the baby's car seat in the van. The seating arrangement was not optimal ... Dan has a window seat which he adores, but Fiona would have been situated in the middle of the bench seat all the way in the back. And to make matters worse, only one of the power doors on the Sienna worked ... until today.

Jim has been pretty determined to solve this mystery. Our mechanic told us that the door's motor likely gave out and a replacement would cost $600. Yikes. So Jim took a look at the owner's manual. Apparently, the door can stop working if the gas tank door is open. Jim deduced from this that the door may really "think" that the gas door is open when it isn't. He undid the battery and then hooked it back up. Neither of us expected it to actually work. When it did, we were dancing in the driveway. Dan got pretty excited, too, clapping his hands and jumping (a new skill for him).

Now we can put the second bucket seat back so that I'll have one kid seated at each door. And I'm just thrilled that I won't have to maneuver the two of them into the van with only one power door ... aren't I just so spoiled?

Sewing projects of late

I reached my goal of a dozen newborn fitted diapers and started on the mediums. I have two so far. Also, I've made two wet bags to hold dirty cloth diapers. One is a draw string bag that I can hang up downstairs and one is a zippered bag for the diaper bag. I went to the fabric store Friday to scope out some waterproof fabric. I came up with two yards of felt lined tablecloth material in the remnant bin for a grand total of 82 cents. That forms the interior of the bag, while the outer material is made from some leftover baby-print fabric. None of these items are by any means perfect, but who cares? After all, these items are all for containing baby pee and poop.